The Supreme Court has junked petitions seeking review of its February 15, 2024, five-judge Constitution Bench judgment by which it had struck down the Electoral Bond scheme that was brought for the funding of the political parties and had ruled that the scheme and the amendments to the Representation of People Act, the Income Tax Act, the Companies Act and 2017 Finance Act to facilitate the scheme were unconstitutional and arbitrary.
Dismissing the review petition, a bench of Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Justice BTbGavai, Justice JB Paridwala and Justice Manoj Misra said, “Having perused the review petitions, there is no error apparent on the face of the record. No case for review under Order XLVII Rule 1 of the Supreme Court Rules 2013. The review petitions are, therefore, dismissed.”
The top court also dumped the application for the hearing of the review petitions in the open court.
Striking down the Electoral bond (EB) scheme which gave anonymity to both the corporates buying EBs and the political parties receiving them, and holding that it was violative of Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, a five-judge constitution bench in two concurrent judgments authored by the Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice Sanjiv Khanna, had ruled “The Electoral Bond Scheme, the provision to Section 29C (1) of the Representation of the People Act 1951 (as amended by Section 137 of Finance Act 2017), Section 182(3) of the Companies Act (as amended by Section 154 of the Finance Act 2017), and Section 13A(b) (as amended by Section 11 of Finance Act 2017) are violative of Article 19(1)(a) and unconstitutional.”
The constitution bench had further said that the “deletion of the provision to Section 182(1) of the Companies Act permitting unlimited corporate contributions to political parties is arbitrary and violative of Article 14.”
The constitution bench had struck down the controversial
Election Bond scheme while addressing four questions that it had framed for the adjudication of the challenge to the scheme on the grounds of its being opaque and violated the citizens right to information under Article 19(1)(a).